On Tue, 17 Apr 2012 07:46:41 +0100, Dave N
wrote:

On 17/04/2012 03:38, Mike Tomlinson wrote:

Following on from another thread...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environmen...fracking-gets-
green-light

http://tinyurl.com/cumqamx

(that's a vaguely dirty-sounding shortlink tinyurl came up with!)


Indeed, and to listen to some business commentators there are sufficient
reserves under Lancashire to last the UK for 50 years. Such comments
must obviously be taken with large quantities of salt, but they
illustrate the problem of separating fact from fiction in the energy
world given the hyperbole surrounding the issue on both sides of the
social, political, economic and environmental arguments, not to mention
self-interested misinformation.

Nevertheless it is probably indisputable that very significant deposits
of oil shale are to be found beneath Lancashire. Whether the
recoverable gas resources are commensurate, is an entirely different and
still largely unanswered question. This underlines the futility of
making predictions about when fossil fuels will "run out", and all that
ensues from such pronouncements.

There are very large deposits of shale oil in many other parts of the
world still to be fully assessed, just two examples out of many are
China which has what are believed to be vast deposits far larger than
those found in the USA, and Argentina. The latter are onshore deposits
in addition to the offshore deposits of oil being explored in the
Atlantic near the Falkland Islands. New gas fields have just been
confirmed in the Eastern Mediterranean and the very first test well
explored off Cyprus has been assessed at about 5 trillion cubic feet.
This field will not require "fracking" and the gas is recoverable
through natural pressure. There are other fields yet to be explored in
the area and that doesn't take into account fields already found off
Israel. Both countries are considering how they might export natural
gas in light of their respective geopolitical situations but it is a
given that they have discovered more natural gas than they consume when
exploration has only just begun.

The price of natural gas in the USA has plummeted in the last year,
simply because large quantities of shale gas have come onto the market
and the USA is now contemplating exporting gas. The price of gas has
fallen so low there and so rapidly that companies are now having to
mothball up to half of the wells which they only opened up very recently.

So...

I have this picture in my head of the gas coming out and the Earth
shrinking down like a deflating balloon.

fx: looks around, nervously
Erme - only me then?

Nick